


The witch of the far shore

by faceofstone



Category: Myst Series
Genre: Canon up to Uru/EoA!, Complicated Relationships, Gen, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-08-25 13:22:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16661803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faceofstone/pseuds/faceofstone
Summary: One last meeting, out of humbleness, out of grace





	The witch of the far shore

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notearchiver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notearchiver/gifts).



> So, 'bout Yeesha having trouble coming to terms with Achenar's death...
> 
> Full credits for the "It's about the self" line go to a friend who shall be named after the anonymity period! What's the point of being Yeesha fans if we don't make fun of her literal name being literally tattooed on her forehead at least once a week...

A ghost danced through the ruins of Tomahna. The old walkways stood fast under her passage, rust unbothered by the brushing of tattered veils as a dark procession followed, amassing around her when her tiptoes and slow arches came to a halt on one of the terraces. The desert's sun cast strange shadows on the far-off ground. One moment the silhouette of one of the creatures took shape on the rocks and in a heartbeat an apparition was gone, and another took its place.

 

“Father. You always were predictable.” Yeesha's fingers lingered on the symbols on the combination lock. She found a connection through the metal, in the soft curves of dulled edges. With a click, the pieces slid into place, following the simple logic of a simple code. The kitchen's lock swung open and Yeesha, weary ghost in the rooms of her childhood, sat on dusty pillows and breathed in the air of home.

 

Outside, a bahro sang their sympathy in a row of mourning warbles, their song rolling down the canyon, etching its cries in the cracks and crevices. Yeesha, too, sang with them without human sounds until her voice failed her and she sat in silence, surrounded by the creatures.

 

“Not here,” she said, eventually, in English, speaking once again in the language of her ghosts instead of that of her companions. “Not in this room, there was warmth here and some measure of joy could be found. But the open wounds still converge in Tomahna, trickling down to poll in the depths of your house, the wounds I have followed to this place that don't… they mix, and merge, and hide their hems. For how long must I still follow? For how long to get lost and bleed...” 

Behind her, over the ridge, the sun was setting. 

“Or is it impossible to find a single point of origin and mend it for as long as this topography rests on my aching back? One first stitch, a beginning. Mother, Father, I only ask for one stitch…”

 

Night found her in the library, center of all labyrinths. The scaffolds lay empty, stripped of all the worlds and the memories they once had held. All that remained was the dust of decades and unwanted remnants, too painful for Atrus to bring along in his new home on Releeshahn: a chipped cup, two embers of firemarbles, a watch engraved in letters Yeesha could not read, five Books, six commentaries (the mismatched one spoke of yellow cliffs and clear skies filled with stars. Yeesha did not intrude in her father's tidy annotations of what went wrong in those lands - if he had taken just the Book with him, he must have hoped to forget about it one day and go back to the simple joy of standing under a sky full of stars).

 

“One stitch.” She held the blue Book close to the veils of her cloak, knuckles white against the faded leather, and disappeared. One by one, the bahro followed her, leaving Tomahna empty and silent under the desert night.

 

-

 

Under the watch of a bemused troop of mangrees, Achenar was elbows-deep in mud. “Go on, laugh, you lot,” he said, flinging dirt at the busybodies. “And laugh again in a month when the winds come for real. No food to eat, only empty mouths to laugh.” He paused to think it through as he placed a handful of mud atop the barrier he had been building. “And me, I'll laugh at you with my mouth full of beans. Safe here on my land. No sea water past this wall.”

 

A ghost came to him. 

He did not raise his spear at her until she stood a dozen feet from him - he did see her from far away, hunter's instincts honed by the years, but took her for a mirage, a spectre of the shore. His mind had a fauna of its own and he had long learned to just let the bloodied figures linger at the periphery of his daily humdrum, and the heavy winds that announced the coming of winter carried their spirits too, lashing and screaming, everything screaming forever like dozens of worlds going up in flames. None of them, however, were like the figure who was walking toward him, leaving a faint trail of footsteps on the sand. She dressed in faded greens, layers of fabric draped around her like moss, strange symbols traced on her skin and jewels and braided into unruly red hair. She raised an arm toward him and showed him an empty hand.

“You can not hurt me,” she said. What her voice lacked in boldness, it gained in echoes, backed by a row of distant calls, alien to Achenar, like if insects sang bird songs.

Achenar's grip on his spear tightened until his knuckles went white. His ghosts didn't talk to him. They screamed. They only screamed.

Nothing else talked to him, either.

“I don't think you're real. New. Not real.”

The apparition raised a tattooed eyebrow, as if she had just been told a poignant joke. She did not confirm nor deny her status, nor move from her spot, unbothered by the weapon raised at her. She looked around and shuffled her feet like she weren't there at all, no more corporeal than a visitor in someone else's dream; Achenar blinked and she did not disappear, a fact which seemed to surprise them both. When by some arcane alignment of faraway stars she seemed to find her focus, she turned to him, stared up at him, filled with purpose and intensity Achenar had no words for. 

“Who are you?” he said, eager to hear her words again, any words, a connection, thoughts that came from outside. It was worth more than defending his food and territory from a tiny unarmed intruder who didn't look interested in either, and so he found himself letting his weapon drop, burying its tip in the sand. But she had no answer ready - just as she was ready to embrace the hypothesis of her own non-existence, asking her to define what she  _ was _ seemed to have put her in a tight spot.

“A witch,” she said, eventually. Once again, the bird-insects’ calls echoed her voice.

“Don't get a lot of those. Zeftyrs, mostly. But then, everyone's so damned territorial. Where do witches come from?”

“Far away.”

“There is no far away, witch.” He had counted the number of steps it took to get from the lagoon to the jungle's cliffs, for no other reason than to remember how the numbers follow each other: there was no far away from Haven, if not across the sea or through a book that had never been there. And yet the woman was there in front of him, bold and impossible.

She took in the smell of the sea, the rolling of the waves.

“On the branches of the Great Tree,” she said, and nodded to herself, like her words had finally wandered into a known path, even thought it was known to her alone, “there is more space between one leaf and its kin than across a score of stars, and I could cross it. In an instant I could cross it. The time it would take for you to hear my name… But I will not. I will not. I come from another day, another island, one that lies across a lake, or one that cradled life among the sands, but you are right - it is not far away.”

“So, like, beyond the sea?”

“...yes.”

“You came by boat?”

“ _ Witch _ .” She waved her hand, as if to say  _ I walked _ , or  _ These concerns are below me. _

“Ah. Right. Look, witch, I need help with this mud.”

“Mud?”

“It's the beans that grow here.”

“I do not know if I am allowed to stay…”

“They grow big here, something about the soil, that's what plants do, but when the winds rise, they get sea water all over the young plants and they die, so I'm here thinking, if I-”

“Yes. I can hear them.”

“The beans?”

“The winds.” 

“You can see 'em too, there's a storm right there, witch. The dark line on the sea, it's the first one comin’.”

“I do not know if I am allowed…” she said again, but she had already crouched down by his tentative mud barrier and was digging out a handful of earth to add it on top.

“That's your magic, huh? I'll take the help, don't get me wrong. I pictured something… different.”

“You'd be surprised.” She looked up with the faintest trace of a smirk. “I will stay, Achenar. I won't be here for the storm, as that is not mine to weather. But I will stay, for a while.”

Achenar wasn't sure he'd ever given her his name, but then again he wasn't sure of many things. They could be confused together, for a while. She didn't have the build of a fighter, but she worked well, with a good feeling for the soil under her hands. When splatters of mud reached her vest and her hair, she looked like she felt real enough.

 

Hours passed. The wind rose. They had forgotten how to be in someone else's company, if they ever really knew such things, so they worked in silence, building a connection through the earth, until the first drops of rain fell on their faces.

“Achenar. It is time.”

He knew, and he was grateful. For the work, for the few words they'd shared.

“We make a good team.”

“We do.” She fought down tears, for some reason. Maybe witches were also lonely, beyond the sea.

“There is a roof and a fire over by the forest. I owe you. I can share food.”

“...can't stay.”

“Busy bein’ a witch, huh.”

“Very.”

“So what brought you here, past the sea like a fish? If you're real. Still haven't decided on that one.”

She shrugged - jury could stay out on that one.

“Motives are… complicated.” She welcomed the onset of the storm, raising her hands up to greet the raindrops. “Always manifold, a complex web. It is necessary for… witches… to make like a desert bird and be able to see the threads in advance, or old mistakes will circle round and round in a ring of iron. So you have two threads in your hands, interwoven, one is made out of hubris, the other out of mercy. I needed to know that I could… hold onto that mercy. Go back, only to mend. Weave a link that would not break the future.”

“Wait, that sounds like-”

It sounded like something Mother used to say, or something he dreamt she used to say, if he had not dreamt all of her to begin with, along with faded scraps of a life off this island. But once his helper started to talk, as he'd already found out, she was not easy to interrupt. She talked to herself and to the rain as much as she did to him. “It is impossible for two people to know each other in full - all we ever have is two moments of our personal time intersecting, joining for a short spell. But it can make a difference. I have only ever known one you, this you, Achenar. It is this you I have traveled to, it is this you I am grateful to. Now you know this me. It can make a difference. This visit will not: it will lay low, deep, in the darkness, blossoming, nourishing, always unseen. But you will. Do you understand?”

“Not a word.”

“Good. This, too, will help.”

“You're weird.” He patted her head. “Birds don't sew.” Which reminded him, “What is it you have drawn on your forehead? Is it a bird near the top? What's in the middle?”

“It is,” she said and paused, biting her lip as if that question had been the unexpected wrench that broke her monologue machine. “It is about the self.” She nodded to herself - that should do it.

“You're weird.”

“Thank you. You too.”

“And now you have to go.”

“I have to go alone,” she said, anticipating his following question. But she wasn't happy about it either, and she threw her arms around him in an awkward hug, and Achenar felt like a kid again, when he and Sirrus were close and would always have each other's back. He held her close, like he used to hold Sirrus when his brother was in over his head, and he knew that, not unlike Sirrus, she was fighting back tears again and losing. It would do these pompous know-it-alls some good to shout it all out once in a while, he figured, and let her cry on his shoulder until the rain had gotten them both drenched.

“Will I see you again?”

“...yes. Yes, you will.”

 

With that, she found the strength to let go. Like a bird, in a moment she was far away, leaving a faint trail of footsteps on the sand, which the rain erased before the ebbing and tiding of the wave. 


End file.
